


palimpsest

by arcanum (owlkaashi)



Series: as stories are made up of words, words have their own stories [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: If you squint lmao, Light Angst, Longing, M/M, Yearning, artist!Atsumu, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlkaashi/pseuds/arcanum
Summary: There is a word for it, he thinks, when the original is blotted out to be written over by something else but leaving traces of its past — one version swapped out for another./ˈpaləm(p)ˌsest/nouna manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: as stories are made up of words, words have their own stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008165
Kudos: 25





	palimpsest

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i'm back! kinda? anyway, enjoy!

There are far better things to do on a sunny Thursday afternoon — with the sky as clear as the waters of the beach he and his family frequented as a child and the daylight as golden as his irises — but here he is, underneath the shade of an oak tree with its brown leaves softly cascading down from their branches and a half-finished sketch on his lap.

Atsumu stares at it — melancholy and confusion playing a game of tug-of-war with his heart as the rope — and it stares back at him. A humourless joke, one that only fate would find funny, considering that the sketch only consists of a jawline, a neck, and a curly chevelure. 

He blinks and another leaf is pulled by gravity. He blinks and time falls away like leaves in the autumn breeze.

He sandwiches the pencil between the pages of his sketchbook before he lets a frustrated sigh leave his lips and thumps his head back onto the trunk of the tree.

There really are better ways to spend his Thursday afternoon but a faceless ghost haunts his dreams and fills the pages of his sketchbook with incoherent scribbles written over where eyes, nose, and lips should be. A name is scribbled out too but a letter remains untouched.

_(From the slanting and the small but distinguishable tail of the ‘O’, he knows two things. First, the name is written in script. Lastly, he has never written in script.)_

There is a word for it, he thinks, when the original is blotted out to be written over by something else but leaving traces of its past — one version swapped out for another. The word is at the tip of his tongue like the scribbled out name on the corner of one of the pages of his sketches.

_Wonderful,_ he groans. _Now I can’t remember the word either_.

He picks on the lush grass beneath him in frustration as he mulls over the word. _Pa– Palliative? Paradigm? Pallor? Paracosm? Palisade?_

He stops picking on the grass and hangs his head low in surrender. He gives it a rest and finally stands up, brushing off any grass and soil on him, when he feels the tell-tale signs of a cramp on his back and the feeling of static on his right leg. 

Aimlessly, he wanders from the park with his sketchbook in hand. His mind has wandered as well — thinking of vivid dreams filled with ghosts — and lets his instinct lead him to wherever. He halts when his feet protests and then turns his attention to the shop he stopped in front of — a bookstore café.

A small bell chimes when he opens the door, the warmth slowly enveloping him until the last vestiges of the cold autumn breeze is completely gone. He makes his order and goes to find a seat.

He scopes the place for an unoccupied seat and sees one by the window. He passes by a few tables and almost makes it to his when something from his periphery catches his eye. He does a double take and backtracks, he glances at the open sketchbook on the table and gapes at the familiarity of the thin strokes of charcoal lines etched on the paper. 

The sketch is almost a perfect replica of the ones on his — complete with the blotted out face and scribbled off name — except this time, he notices a distinctive feature, something that was not on any of his sketches as far as he could tell. Two moles, just right above the right brow.

The owner is looking outside the window, either blissfully unaware or deliberately ignoring the intrusion of a certain blond. 

Atsumu catches his attention with a question.

“Isn’t there a word for when an original writing has been erased to be written on by something new but traces of the original remains?” He knows it’s not a good introduction or greeting but the curiosity is eating away at him.

The man contemplates him for a moment and then, for the briefest second, Atsumu swears he saw the smallest upturn of his lips and a flash of recognition in the stranger’s eyes.

_A trick of the light, perhaps,_ he muses.

“Palimpsest,” the man finally says.

“What?” 

“The word you’re looking for.” The amusement is clear in the stranger’s voice. “It’s palimpsest.”

There it was again, the recognition in foreign eyes. _Or maybe not that foreign_.

“Oh.” Atsumu offers dumbly. “Thank you.”

The stranger only nods and moves to close the sketchbook but the blond catches a glimpse of a coherent word written in the same neat script on the bottom of the page and blurts out another question that stops the other in their tracks.

"Who are you?" 

He looks up at the blond, a stray lock of raven hair moves and reveals what's underneath. Atsumu finally sees the two moles above his right brow as a pair of onyx eyes study him.

_Not faceless,_ he realizes, _fogged_.

Somewhere in his chest, just right behind and slightly to the left of the breastbone, a game of tug-of-war is won. 

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of his mind, a fog lifts and dreams of a faceless ghost fade away.

He blinks and a blotted out past is pieced together from what remains. He blinks and a face is mapped out and etched onto paper with charcoal lines. He blinks and a name, well-loved and sweet, is traced in script. 

Memories become dreams when the forgotten wants to be remembered — when the past resurfaces and the present is buried, like a reverse palimpsest.

All at once, Atsumu knows but the world does not shift on its axis nor does the sky break apart — he rather wishes it would. A phenomenon that everyone can see is easier to accept than the one that is only experienced by a lone soul.

A word — _a name_ — threatens to leave his lips but it stays where it is, stagnant and waiting.

_(Kiyoomi. Omi._

_Bittersweet and smooth.)_

The sky may not have shattered but the deafening silence did.

“Atsumu.”

**Author's Note:**

> my first work back and i write nonsense, sorry :< but i do hope you enjoyed! also, huge kudos to the invisible life of addie larue by ve schwab for getting me obsessed with the word palimpsest! 
> 
> come find me on twt! i'm [@akaamshikei](https://twitter.com/akaamshikei)!


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